Feast of Love
Moore, Sebastian
in the film, on small self-help projects sponsored by the join organizations similar to those presented here. A worthy church, may confuse this issue of governmental...
...though it is, that evidences the beauty of A loss of harmony may - and must, if What the Fall means, according to sexual union as a covenantal expression...
...This is the crux, of his Asian Journal - causing both his ROBERT D. HOLS WORTH is an associate procourse...
...This idea has serious consequences...
...is a prelude to the Wondering why this was so, and seekhave chosen, rather, to bring the whole Song of Songs...
...Such a book too mediate effect...
...For that reason, even the weaknesses of the between capitalism and Christianity if you conceive of documentary - its simplistic rendering of the controversy capitalism as based on personal greed...
...Beware of neo-platonism...
...as well as allied issues of systemic change, even though Yet the letter has a wealth of other points to make, and it Archbishop Rembert Weakland peers into the camera to say: makes them with a degree of sophistication and nuance not ". .. it would seem that there is a kind of constant tension evident in the flm...
...part and parcel of our condition...
...lower...
...Now, it shows even more vividly I am not saying we can undo the Fall...
...is very traditional...
...Virginia Commonwealth University...
...In short, he reads the text about the time Thomas Merton was soon after Merton's death would have as justifying the attitude which the text is celebrating his twenty-fifth year as a certainly blunted the impact of his other telling us we must deplore...
...of the national hierarchies following the Humanae Vitae reiterated the ban on con- It is because his interpretation of birth control encyclical has not been suftraception, causing - it has been so- Genesis reinstates, reestablishes this gulf ficiently marked...
...In other words, what and the "lower" nature is lost...
...less than 42 years truer perspective on sex...
...A correct read- And, as he did with every other turn in SEBASTIAN MOORE, O.S.B...
...the expression...
...fascinatingly problematic...
...This is not a digression...
...The birth people experience as sex, what they ex- way of admitting, at last, the laity's excontrol question was taken out of the perience sex as...
...Bishop Butler said to me at the time, "What it comes down to is that the hierarchies are protecting their flocks Tasting the terrible sweetness from the pope...
...In reflection on one's ful rebellion of their lower nature, as a Commonweal: 600 result of'which experience they are filled One of the most significant moments subservient to a very rigid and long unwith shame and cover their sexual or- at Vatican II was when the imperative of questioned understanding of natural law...
...This hubris-inspired embarrassment at being sexual is one experience of the fallen Air Fo rce Chaplaincy condition...
...As that kind of is the bishops' primary interest: the need to make our economic introductory tool, the film serves a worthwhile purpose...
...The thematic connection between shame and the act of disobedience is made no less AL i1 Laawu than three times in the narrative...
...office door for the final, forthcoming document, so they can What a viewer of the film can learn about the pastoral letter read it themselves, then discuss it with others...
...cil's collective mind...
...his/her animality embarrassing...
...and they saw that they were naked...
...of the fallen Adam be- Global Vision comes the "sex, ugh...
...A gap of justified, by the fact of the Fall, whereas cance...
...of the church...
...What is lost to view is that a failure to honor sexual union as an experience succumbs to the hubris of origi- Global Ministry nal sin...
...we are to avoid a fatal distortion - be Pope John -Paul, is that we are very Or is there only the idea of a divinely considered both as a failure of the poorly in touch with our sexuality as it shaped union of which our sexual ex- "lower" to obey the "higher" and as a truly is, as it images the creating perience is the always deficient expres- failure of the "higher" to befriend the Godhead...
...Yet at the cru- of age of the time of appointment...
...To anyone who is wondering Nearly all the national hierarchies, in Humanae Vitae, namely the benign at- how this can happen, I would commend a their pastoral epilogues, tried to give to titude of national hierarchies to con- close study of Mary Durkin's profound the judgment of the married a crucial traception, which has been authority's work...
...In other words, it is shame that generates lust...
...This is a Pope's text is not given but paraphrased, Sebastian Moore phenomenology of sexuality descriptive each section being accompanied with an in its intention...
...7 November 1986: 601 The plunge was not taken...
...The "sex, ugh...
...It is necessary EIGHTEEN POEMS Indeed, the demands of his own mind and to set the work under review in the con- Thomas Merton spirit required a continual examination of text of recent church history...
...talks is that the first three chapters of ing of sexuality is realized in our present, John Paul's interpretation of this moment Genesis, heard with faith, offer a per- fallen condition...
...Whenever the Vatican talks of admirers and detractors, upon opening fessor in the political science department at sex, it never seems to have in mind what his latest book, to see a "new Merton...
...Certainly the "lower nature," thus outlawed, gets its own back by behaving lawlessly - and this is lust...
...Of this sublime condi- ing clues in this dense text, I came upon work to a certain focus, where I find it tion, of intimacy in God, sexual union is something that I believe may be the clue...
...it is looking down on sexuality that is the immediate effect of disobeying God...
...It must be recalled, ciologically demonstrated - a far great- between the sexual reality and sexual now that the supreme authority seems to er exodus of people from the Amer- theologizing, that the present pope has be recovering the confidence of Casti ican church than any other single factor...
...It is in the reason why we are accustomed to the is this full sexual experience...
...But when the older have still another "new Merton...
...With this New Directions, $200, Limited conscience and when old answers no behind us, let me sum up my critique, Edition, Unfolioed longer measured up, Merton was not one and then set that in this wider context...
...And have referred...
...KAREN SUE SMITH Books: IDEAS OF CONSEQUENCE I N what is surely a labor of love, Mary FEAST OF LOVE body in its maleness or femaleness, its Durkin sets before us, in a beautifully POPE JOHN PAUL II essential incompleteness, yes...
...Okay, on a honeymoon...
...some eighteen years between writing and this downgrading is the Fall in its im- The true love of his life appeared at publication is fortuitous...
...Commonweal: 602...
...in the clear and readable form, the meditations ON HUMAN INTIMACY mysteriousness of the union of two in one of Pope John Paul II on the first chapters Mary G. Durkin flesh, yes...
...to hold onto them very long...
...ual experience, the implication is mis- Call Father Eugene Gosporovic sed...
...In sum, the reason why the pope's Paul Wilkes And so we have this beautifully pubbiblical mirror to sexuality does not show lished, quite limited edition of poems, sexual experience as we know it, fallen 0 LDER MEN have been attracted to most of them written to or about "M.," a though we are, as valid and revelatory of younger women before, patients to student nurse he met while hospitalized God, is that where the biblical text shows their nurses...
...To get a glimpse of this true sion...
...Is there treatment of this lost harmony that I find narrower view with all the conflicts and anything in sex as we know it, "fallen" the clue I have been seeking...
...gans...
...the hay is revelatory of God...
...Further, there is a theological intimacy with God...
...Much of traditional Catholic Parish Oriented thinking on sexuality falls into this trap...
...Cardinal Suenens warned "higher" to befriend the "lower...
...But a to write about it and want it public...
...REVIEWERS that results from the Fall...
...These profound meditations are seek- Requirements for the Air Force Priest: A citizen of ing in the Genesis account a deeper and the United States of America...
...Shame emerges as an appropriate reac- Fulfilling tion to the disorder of lust, whereas in the biblical account shame is how sexuality looks to the human pretending to be Relevant God...
...But the pope stresses It occurs, not surprisingly, where the The fundamental idea behind these with what great difficulty this full mean- moment of the Fall is being explored...
...What disappears from the account Necessary of original sin when we follow the pope's order of "shame because of lust," is the notion of sin consisting in contempt for the flesh...
...They eat the fruit, and words, the above implication of the story tion, have another Galileo case on our "immediately their eyes were opened, of the Fall became operative in the coun- hands, which might be one too many...
...contradictions it engenders: the Fall...
...which it happens...
...Of course sexual shame is much worse, Merton was brave enough This Mind Be In You (Seabury...
...Poems have been written for a painful neck problem...
...Somehow, year's weekly public audiences...
...perience as crucial in this whole affair...
...moting the very attitude of shame at sex ceived in his lifetime...
...In representatives of a two-thousand-year- the Fathers that we might, if we persisted fact, it makes this failure the key to the old celibate tradition - when, in other in the traditional attitude to contracepwhole thing...
...It is not quite Christian...
...sharing in this aloneness and partnership I mean that there is no feeling for that It is not possible in the space of a with God...
...council's hands and given to a papal It was very nearly bridged at that historic The sharp difference between the tone of commission, whose virtually unanimous moment during Vatican II, to which I Pius XI's Casti Connubii (1930) and that vote for change was ignored...
...He sees the the spiritual giants of our time, such with the request that they would be pubdowngrading of sexual experience as poems certainly take on an added signifi- lished after the author's death...
...What the biblical text is saying to us collect at 202-767-1485...
...I overwhelming as perhaps - and such that this was a man who never escaped am saying that we have to learn from it, postulation is foolish at best - any mys- his human nature while seeking the diand that we do not learn from it by pro- tical experience or sublime insight he re- vine...
...That never comes through...
...system address the deprivations of the poor and unemployed...
...At risk of our fallenness to consist in a downgrad- about the kindling of love in a firebox using the rubber stamp once more: we ing of sexual experience, the pope does unused to such heat...
...here is not "Sexual experience is not what God meant it to be" but "Beware of n iriw7 ~w down-grading sex in your quest for God...
...spiritual reflection by Mary Durkin...
...In the pope's account, it is the other way round: lust generates shame...
...I flesh of my flesh...
...teaches theology ing of the text will demote, not promote, his life, this time surely risking scorn and at Boston College...
...Receive cial point where the Fall is dramatized as ecclesiastical permission of Bishop/Religious involving a subtle disesteem of our sex- Superior...
...But in sex, in a roll in the hay of Genesis that formed the content' of a Loyola University, $9.95, 248 pp...
...I think we have to inject into that system now the government's rightful role in providing for those without life's kind of unselfishness that will help us to all float in the boat necessities - should send viewers hammering on the parish together...
...spiritual insight that the book contains...
...A worthy church, may confuse this issue of governmental responsibility, achievement...
...The context was And Charles Davis, a peritus at the counIronically, the jumped-up god whom the the debate on birth control...
...Lawrence...
...It is available in tape, film, and video for rent or purchase The film may certainly increase the viewer's concern for those from California Newsreel...
...630 Natoma St., San Francisco, the system has overlooked, and may even motivate some to CA 94013...
...The gulf is always there...
...For the story is telling us, first, about the these profound reflections, that their what happens in John Paul's account is deep existential solitude of the human papal author does not believe that there is that they eat the fruit, that is, disobey being, which calls us into "partnership any clue to the sublime reality in sexual God, and as a result experience the lustwith the Absolute," and which reveals experience itself...
...attention to people's sexual experience as Patriarch Maximos suggested that church The Genesis story, on' the other hand, an indispensable unitive value in the ,authority suffered from a "bachelor features the corresponding failure of the human community was thrust upon the psychosis...
...He in- Exciting sists that "man is ashamed of his body because of lust...
...Adam's ecstatic cry on seeing area of experience for which Lawrence review to do justice to the wealth of the woman, "Behold, bone of my bone, has found such memorable words...
...The result of disspective on sexuality that is far wider and The question I would raise is this: how obedience to God is that the harmony, in deeper than that to which we are accus- do we know when we are realizing this the human being, between the "higher" tomed...
...PAUL WILKES, the author of Merton By theology that fails, to see further than this Merton grew and changed incredibly Those Who Knew Him Best, was the writer, is not faithful to the "oracles of God...
...not follow the text...
...felt able to reverse the trend that followed Connubii...
...I am saying Storey Mountain to the questioning and WILLIAM H. SLAVICK is a Benedictine oblate that where sexual experience is so rev- angry activist of Conjectures of a Guilty who teaches at the University of Southern elatory, it is so in the delightful way in Bystander to the Buddhist proselyte of Maine...
...The no...
...But it is only the failure of the perspective, we have to consider what 'I keep getting the feeling, reading "lower" to obey that is considered...
...Trappist, and to him it was apparently as works...
...role...
...But we are light years excellent summary and a valuable the partnership of man and woman as a away from the world of D.H...
...I don't want to see it surrounding the pastoral, and its unintentional obscuring of the that way...
...during his years at Gethsemani - from director, and co-producer of the PBS docuAnd I am not saying that any old roll in the ardent arch-Catholic of The Seven mentary, Merton...
...On the contrary, by man, a patient, falls in love with his The poems were written in 1966 and inverting the text's order of shame and nurse, and happens to be a cloistered entrusted to his longtime friend and New lust, he gets from the text a downgrading Trappist monk, and additionally one of Directions publisher, James Laughlin, of sexual experience...
...Could the cil, told the press that evening, "Today, serpent has duped finds the evidence of value enshrined in sexual union be made my role as a theologian changed...
...His latest book is Let this attitude...
Vol. 113 • November 1986 • No. 19
